Yelp Reviewers Sue The Company Because They Think They're Employees

A group of reviewers recently filed a class
action lawsuit against Yelp, claiming that the company should
treat them like employees and pay them for their reviews.

Yelp believes the suit is frivolous.

The suit argues that since Yelp's business model and success is
dependent on its over 42 million user-submitted reviews, the
company technically employs those users and should fork
over some cash (wages, reimbursement of expenditures, and
damages). The plaintiffs believe that willfully
volunteering to share their thoughts about a business makes them
employees because Yelp can only make money if it has their
reviews.

The suit, filed on October 20 in the U.S. District Court
for the Central District of California, claims that Yelp
mis-classifies its "employees" as "volunteers, independent
contractors, interns, contributors, freelance writers, reviewers,
elites, or Yelpers."

The litigantscreated a
websiteto recruit people
to to be part of the lawsuit, asking about how many reviews users
have written and whether they have been declared one of the
site's "elite" users.

The site says harsh things about the company: "Yelp is a cult like exploiter of labor in
violation of federal law and declared to be the 'modern day
mafia' by a San Diego judge and 'organized crime' and 'offensive'
by a Portland judge."

Yelp, which went public in 2012, told Circa that the case is a "textbook example of a
frivolous lawsuit" and said that the law does not support the
idea that voluntarily using a free service equates to an
employment relationship.